Archives for December, 2008

Merry Christmas to all my readers, and even more to my writers. Here is a festive image, tastefully coloured in by me. And now for the quiz. In the spirit of “5 advances in climate science” I ask for the 5 best mistakes in sci-fi novels of the past year. To get the ball rolling…

Nurture offers us …how far our understanding of climate change has come in the past twelve months. But its a bit thin, especially for just a pick of the top five; there are of course others we could have mentioned. 5. is “skeptics are still out there” – which has nothing to do with the…

Hansen again. He seems to have got bored with saying climate sensitivity is 6 oC, and now agrees with JA that its 3 oC. Hurrah. Less excitingly, his estimate for all-ice-sheet melt on 2-3 x CO2 is now “it would take some time”, which has the virtue of vagueness. But far more excitingly, he is…

http://climate.columbia.edu/blog/ defines “abrupt climate change” as: A large-scale change in the climate system that takes place over a few decades or less, persists (or is anticipated to persist) for at least a few decades, and causes substantial disruptions in human and natural systems. apparently oblivious to the problem that they have just declared that no…

Perl would be Voodoo – An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night. From If programming languages were religions…, via mt’s shared list. The comments add Fortran and Assembler.…

I have a twitter feed, http://twitter.com/wmconnolley. Quite what its for, I’m not sure. Maybe it will turn out to be useful. Maybe I can embed it into my blog or something. Did I mention that I have a pointless facebook page? Oh look, facebook has a twitter app. It doesn’t tell me what it does,…

I’ve already used Clowns to the left of me…. And then I run across an opinion article in today’s Guardian: “Let’s Get Real on the Environment.” by David Appell nicely counterbalanced by Yes. We Can.. Oh dear oh dear. To begin with the obligatory snarking, anyone with young children in the UK will instantly recognise…

Because Kevin Anderson says that it is “improbable” that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm). Which blows Hansens target 350 out of the water. Not that it requires a luminary of KA standing to do that. Quite why the grauniad is using breathless climate-snuff-porn prose to report the bleedin’ obvious…

Naturally enough, there is a wiki article [[Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley]]. And of course what to say about his views on GW is a source of controversy: being wiki, it can’t just say he is talkin’ tosh, it has to be more polite. Unlike certain anons, who make comments like Removed POV…

Every now and again the question of how much CO2 nuclear power plants produce, compared with other forms of power production, comes up; and whenever it does, I’ve forgotten where I last saw the figures. So now someone (thanks S) sent me some that look good (and are, by repute, biased against nukes if anything),…